I was haggling with iTunes last night, so I missed last night's edition of The Last Word. It's too bad, because Lawrence O'Donnell kicked the NRA and Wayne LaPierre up, down and sideways over his head-in-the-sand press conference yesterday. Check it out:
O'Donnell was in rare form last night. He didn't expect LaPierre to offer any real solutions, but he sounded shocked at how dense the NRA CEO sounded yesterday. Among the highlights:
- LaPierre speaks for fewer people than the AARP and AFL-CIO--but when their presidents call a press conference, the networks don't break in.
- By his math, it would cost a total of $6.7 billion for every city and town in this country to hire armed police for every school. Which would certainly require new taxes--an idea that wouldn't sit well with NRA board member Grover Norquist.
- LaPierre pooh-poohed the idea that a .223 caliber bullet is nearly as powerful as the media made it out to be. But O'Donnell pointed out that when Adam Lanza opened up on the kids in Sandy Hook, he was firing bullets that flew out at 3,200 feet per second--three times the speed of sound. He sounded particularly appalled that LaPierre would even suggest Lanza could have used something more powerful than that.
- LaPierre may have felt the need to do a press conference after Sandy Hook. However, his only response after the Aurora shooting was a letter to NRA members asking for contributions over and above due.
- LaPierre is all for police in schools, but nowhere else where kids go--leaving them defenseless against the high-capacity magazines and drums that he made possible to be sold again after 2004.
Believe it or not, O'Donnell was more upset over something that LaPierre wrote earlier in November. In another fundraising letter, LaPierre claimed that with Obama's reelection, "you and I lost more on the election battlefield than our nation has lost in any battle, anytime, anywhere." To O'Donnell's mind, LaPierre owes an apology to every veteran and every veteran's family. The more I think about it, only someone dense enough to suggest that an election could result in more losses than on an actual battlefield could actually suggest that keeping assault weapons out of our stores won't stop mass shootings.
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